The Minish Cap

The Minish Cap does nothing wrong. It’s a colorful romp on the GBA with all the classic Zelda tropes in play, and a few new ones to chew on too. But there’s very little that’s exciting about it. The story is too long and too text-heavy. The dungeon designs are pretty but rote compared to the series’ past. It’s the popcorn chicken of the franchise: tasty, harmless, and forgettable.

The introduction of the cap that makes you shrink is a great marketing ploy, but in the game it’s a mechanic pretty fixed by the narrative, not as versatile as the wall-walking in A Link Between Worlds or as all-encompassing as the mirror in A Link to the Past. It pretends to be cleverer than it is by saying a lot about itself. I won’t.

Twilight Princess

This is the 3D equivalent of The Minish Cap. After Ocarina of Time blew off everyone’s polygonal socks and The Wind Waker let series acolytes down, Twilight Princess hoped to smooth things over with as predictable a game as any 3D Zelda game has ever been.

It’s so similar to Ocarina of Time that whole segments play out more as remake than sequel. This game maturated the art style but made no strides in how we went on these adventures. Some of it is beautiful (the Bridge of Eldin) and some of it tedious (the obligatory wolf segments). There’s something to be said for a great, functional game against a creative but clunky one. But no amount of lush textures or imposing bosses can help give you that feeling that this was an adventure worth going on, especially when you have to rank it against its series betters.

Oracle of Ages / Seasons

Pokémon proved long ago that you can sell two copies of the same game with a gimmick. The Oracle of Ages / Seasons pair does a good job legitimizing their gimmick and fans of one probably beat both.

Being developed by Capcom makes them feel a bit more like a Zelda tribute than a series regular. But what makes them truly unique is their action-oriented gameplay. Link flips, jumps, and slashes his way through more enemies and more clever combat scenarios than most entries in the series. It’s one of the lesser titles in terms of exploration and I don’t necessarily approve of splitting content over two cartridges. But while an isometric hack and slash isn’t the adventure-puzzler we’re used to, it was still diverting, divisive in a mostly good way, and cutely colorful like only the GBC could manage.

Ocarina of Time

Sigh. This list was never going to be easy. But this is the big one. Ocarina of Time is a good game, in its time and in its own right. It did a great job making as many people as possible feel like adventurers (that’s the acceptable hamburger I mentioned).But in this series, good is not the best.

Ocarina of Time is the game that introduced walking and talking as a substitute for exploration, that separated puzzles from action, and that literalized the genuine mystery of the quest to find Zelda. For all its mechanical innovations and undeniable influence, a lot of that influence was detrimental to the series’ formula.

Think of it in terms of its exploration, how the best it could do was a hole with a rupee in it. Think about how it introduced Navi as a mouthpiece for the developer to make sure you got through their game in a timely manner, and how in subsequent games you hate that. Think about the pointless dialogue scenarios and the enemies that do nothing but block, or how predictable it is to be given a weapon and directed on a leash through the only dungeon that requires it. It made the transition to 3D, but it cut out the series’ essential explorative spirit to do it. And in this list, that can’t be forgiven.

A Link Between Worlds

The recent A Link Between Worlds is a return to form for a series marred by the explicitness of its 3D incarnations. A Link Between Worlds’ first revelation is in gameplay. With the wall-walking, Link becomes a painting, re-oriented to platforms in new ways to solve clever puzzles and slipthrough hidden cracks. Hyrule’s space expands within its dimension with this mechanic, which allows the player to use their wit in explorative and ingenious scenarios.

Its other revelation is in structure, where the items are “rented” in the game’s hub. Dungeons are solved not with the directed single mindedness of the series’ formula, but with broader applications and subtler uses of your arsenal. This open-minded approach to the formula that makes obligatory aspects like the money system relevant again is the best evidence I can give to the series’ bright future.